The exhibition held at Centre Pompidou since 12 february to 9 june 2014 was an exhaustive biography of Henry Cartier-Bresson. It was founded on the labour of archive made at Cartier-Bresson’s Foundation. The exhibition included artistic and journalistic pictures, both aspects strongly developped by Cartier Bresson during his carrier. Drawings and pictures that he did during his childhood, and drawings from his last years, were also shown.
What I enjoyed the most was a video showing him in action, making a lot of micro-movements, like if he was dancing with the camera. That video was entitled L’Aventure Moderne : Henri Cartier-Bresson, and was did by Roger Kahane for ORTF. What interests me on this video was to see how taking a picture is not something that depends exclusively on the relationship between the eye, the camera and the hands, because the whole body could be (and probably should be) concerned. Probably a good photographer has to be a good dancer…
I definitely learnt a lot of things from all the pictures, but one of them touched me deeply. In the picture there is a man in Paris, in a train station (Gare de l’est) during a rainy day. The man was trying to jump over a huge puddle. We certainly can understand his intention, but it’s perfectly clear that it was not possible to avoid that poodle. The shutter was opened just a second before his shoes fall into the puddle. This picture managed to capture the dream of the man, not his fail. It is an expression of what he called the decisive moment.
